The Haunted World of El Superbeasto (2009)

 

Director: Rob Zombie

Screenplay: Tom Papa and Rob Zombie

Based on a comic by Rob Zombie

Cast: Tom Papa as El Superbeasto; Sheri Moon Zombie as Suzi-X; Paul Giamatti as Dr. Satan; Rosario Dawson as Velvet Von Black; Tom Kenny as Otto / Rover/ Old Man / Herbie; Brian Posehn as Murray the Robot; Dee Wallace as Trixie; Ken Foree as Luke St. Luke; Geoffrey Lewis as Lenny Crumpski / Roy Sullivan

Lew Temple as Adam Banjo

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #234

 

There's no cable in the jungle.

Opening with a thirties cartoon aesthetic, with black and white animation, and even orchestral music, I came to one of the more curious titles within Rob Zombie's career with no idea what to expect. El Superbeasto is an animated film, one which was originally started in 2006, a production which really cuts against the image even I had of him, as he lets his hair down and is effectively goofing off here. Even when our titular lead runs over Michael Myers of the Halloween films in his low-rider for a one scene joke, it is not a extreme as what he did in Halloween 2 (2009).

El Superbeasto, a farcical tale set in a horror world metropolis, follows an egotistical luchador-slash-actor in a very tentative narrative, one with a large cast including his far more likable eye patch wearing stepsister and spy Suzi-X (Sherri Moon Zombie), and a plot of a figure named Dr. Satan (Paul Giamatti) wishing to marry a woman with a 666 birthmark to gain great power. This in context of his film making career, Rob Zombie doing comedy is really strange especially when he was a divisive director of very violent horror films of an acquired taste, one I openly admit barring The Lords of Salem (2012) and Halloween 2 I have not caught the same wavelength with. This adds the weird touch, for what is a film I find a lot of problems because it was trying too hard, is how the figure of such work like The Devil's Rejects (2005) is proudly a pop culture geek of material some of his fan base probably did not know of and, unlike including Urotsukidôji sound clip in a White Zombie song, is probably very uncool to them. For example, it is a hardcore reference, of something no one who may have been the target audience of his films at the time would have known, to have a visual cameo of Korla Pandit, an African-American musician who posed as an Indian composer of exotica music, making a cameo as the piano player at the marriage from Hell.

It is also of its era, as with carte blanche, El Superbeasto asks the question whether you can be ironic with having so many animated bare breasts onscreen, even to the point the song composers Hard 'n Phirm, who come from the Black Dynamite (2009) school of explaining what's onscreen, have a song telling viewers it is okay to masturbate to cartoons and feel like true Americans, even if the film was produced with a South Korean studio. And credit where it is due, for a film whose production was a case of a frolic for its creator which expanded in scope and production, this does look good. It does admittedly evoke The Ren & Stimpy Show, a show I grew up with which is a cursed thing nowadays to make comparisons to, not even because of its creator John Kricfalusi being accused of sexual misconduct and grooming of teenagers, but that he infamously rebooted the series as an adult show with Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon" (2003), a cursed item for many that even a voice actor for the original (Billy West) refused to work on the project¹. That reference, bearing in mind childhood memories are useless to work with, also brings up the issue that El Superbeasto is far more interested in shock value and being silly than actually taking advantage of its tone and world for better jokes.

El Superbeasto is a very crude work, when our lead, a completely unlikable figure prat, is introduced working on a film-within-a-film where, parodying porn, he turns a woman into a living pizza or, really evoking Ren & Stimpy, has another woman erotically sucking one of his rotten, horrible looking toes. At times, the film comes from a time where many people were trying to get away with stereotypes or deliberately shocking comments which, long before "Social Justice Warrior" was considered an insult, was always just low hanging fruit in terms of humour. Rosario Dawson, as Velvet Von Black, a stripper able to inflate her body on command and even mould a breast into a balloon animal, skirts a line of just having Dawson playing all the vulgar and cuss filled stereotypes of a poverty class figure that speaks and farts her mind as much as imagine an unrepentant figure inexplicably finding herself in the plans of marrying Dr. Satan, he himself literally a nerd bullied at school who even without that context was an annoying sex pest. It is also a film which is knowingly being ridiculous and throwing the kitchen sink in with a couple of zombie Nazis, and that too raises the issue that, even without some of the more questionable jokes, this sinks under just wanting to be over-the-top without taking a breath or really embracing the virtues, sunk within itself, which would have been funnier, still incredibly lurid but also even deeply weird in the best ways.

The result is an acquired taste, one which even for Rob Zombie fans would be a great indulgence. This indulgence is what put me off. Moments in this are funny, legitimately so, and some aspects are fascinating to have seen if it was not trying so hard, which makes this more of a strange thing to have to unpick through. Beneath the music by Hard 'n Phirm, whose over explaining for a joke is overbearing, and the over-the-top nature of crude humour and drawn nudity, there is something compelling of being in Rob Zombie's brain, being in a world where the strip club has legendary horror character cameos and monster women dancers, where the most obscure characters he has referenced in lyrics live, not surprising for a man who, whilst reaching trendiness when the likes of Dragula was a track in The Matrix (1999), was referencing The Munsters, an old sitcom from the past even in the nineties when Zombie had Dragula as a popular song.

One of the huge virtues is just Dr. Satan and his assistant Otto, an intelligent ape with a British accent who hates crude things, living in the corpse of King Kong underground with a creator he hates but is stuck with due to Satan being able to twist the screw on his head to turn him into a beast again. Casting Paul Giamatti as Dr. Satan is eyebrow rising but also a beautiful surprise, as Giamatti also happens to steals the film alongside Tom Kenny as Otto, who is a veteran of voice acting famous for playing Spongebob Squarepants. The pair of them and how the characters are written, Satan a dweeb and Otto the figure who has to put up with him, alongside the running gag of Otto's friendship with their elderly elevator operator in very slow conversations, is the sort of thing where you get the perfect mix of humour that is funny in the children's show for grownups tone, and also to funny crude humour when Otto catches Satan wanking and the viewer realises those are dog squeaky toy sounds on the soundtrack to represent it².

Also having clearly gotten the tone right is Sherri Moon Zombie as Suzi X, with Brian Posehn as Murray the Robot. Yes, her character is a hyper-sexualised cheerleader, ahard-as-nails stereotype of all the sexy action women of nineties pop culture who you can have naked all the time, but alongside the delight in Sherri Moon putting on that high pitched voice for the role, there is the knowledge, regardless of what you think of Zombie having all the nudity and sex humour in the film, which is sweet of always having his wife in his films, always presenting her with admiration, even here in this insanely sexualised figure still feeling it was given to someone who would have been game for the role and knew exactly was going to be animated. More so as, since mocking Nazis is a crude joke that is completely defendable, she even gets to steal Hitler's brain (or his head) and mow down an entire mass of incompetent zombie soldiers with her sexually frustrated robot friend, whose relationship shared is a very kinky and passionate one which shows how you could have had your cake and eat it throughout in having the adult humour.

This does ultimately, sadly, become a barrage of jokes with a knowing wink, an irony that does become more a concern than being consistent or actually be engaging rather than too much to digest. As much of this is not appreciating this type of tone at all in truth - that it would have been better to instead be sincere and try to create a world where everything is weird - and that eventually you are also with a film which is just improvising in the end. When it, alongside cameos by regular collaborators with Zombie like the late Sid Haig, it will end on a parody on old southern music television for the last scenes, it feels crow barred in like a lot of the gags do. It is fascinating to be inside Zombie's head, and see how cheesy it is, and that in itself a worthwhile advantage of witnessing films like this, but as I have found in some of his straight faced horror films, there is here too, for all my interest and like in him, or someone who if he focused or embraced the more esoterically weird touches of his work would have won me over more easily.  

 

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1) Referred to in the following interview, though bear in mind of the more "curious" comments within the brief section on that title, including the context that the new version of Ren & Stimpy played up the characters being bisexual for humour. I think we can all agree even the 2000s was a different time even if I do not immediately jump on titles like other amateur reviewers may, with stuff that in hindsight was questionable back then let alone now. Strange as it is too, whilst it would have to come with a warning of John Kricfalusi's problematic accusations for good reason, looking back at the original series and even suffering through Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon" would be fascinating, even if the latter especially sounds like stapling your testicles repeatedly.

2) And for less crude jokes, casting Ken Foree as a talking cat, if you are in on the joke by knowing who he is, is the kind of winking joke that does win you over.